Slashdot Mirror
In the World of Big Stuff, the US Still Rules
westlake writes "From Peoria, the WSJ a look at the giant trucks manufactured by Komatsu and Caterpillar. 'In certain areas — notably aircraft, industrial engines, excavators and railway and mining equipment — the U.S. exports far more than it imports. These industries produce relatively small numbers of very expensive goods, requiring specialized technology and labor. Their competitive advantage rests partly on expertise built by U.S. companies in making durable, high-tech weaponry and other equipment for the military — frequently applicable to other products.' It may surprise you to learn that Komatsu doesn't employee a single industrial robot. The quality of workmanship simply isn't there where it is needed."
Look, we're still in the days of "It's best if it says Made in USA" on it. I've witnessed it, anecdotally *all the way*, first-hand. I've got two thermal temperature probes. One clearly says "Made in the USA" on it and works like a DREAM. Even has a ton of memory and sensor options. Then there's the cheapo version I got for way less, DOESN'T say "Made in the USA" on it - and it's CRAP. Sure, the non-US version works...after you let the LCD "warm up" for 2 minutes! There's also no such thing as memory on it nor sensor options...You get what you pay for and to get merch from the US still requires you pay top dollar.
Don't confuse cheap for quality. Plenty of things are better made, here, in the US. You just have to not be a cheapo.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Neither the submission nor the article says otherwise. This doesn't change the fact that the products being referred to are manufactured in a US-base plant.
But how Japanese could it be if it has no robots?
Thank goodness there's no possible way for this thread to degenerate into a hodgepodge of anecdotes disguised as fact. I'm certain the Slashdot audience will rise above the low hanging fruit.
Yes, the manufacturing plant being referred to in the article is in Peoria, Illinois.
That local expertise attracted Komatsu. After being owned by Mr. LeTourneau, Westinghouse Electric and Dresser Industries, the Peoria plant was sold to Komatsu about two decades ago as part of the Japanese company's effort to establish a major American presence. Komatsu makes smaller mining trucks in Japan, but its largest trucks, able to carry as much as 360 tons of ore, come from Peoria.
And again, nothing in either the article or submission stated that Komatsu was a US company. They were strictly referring to the US-based manufacturing plants that create products that these companies export from the US.
Robots haven't been invented that can fit a gusset plate made of 3/4" steel that doesn't quite fit right because a guy hand made it in a 500 ton press brake. The plates would have to be clamped, heated and hammered with a 10lb sledge hammer to fit properly.
We had about 20 - 35 ton trucks on the assembly line at any given time. There is simply no cost effective way to make a robot do the tasks that these guys were doing.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
They could have used a press and die set up. That would cost upwards of 100 grand. Since they only made 20 units at a time, it's just not cost effective.... and you still don't need a robot.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Caterpiller armoured bulldozers are probably the most visible element of IDF retaliatory demolitions. When your product is being used to knock down the homes of civilians to flush out insurgents in the community then you shouldn't be dumbfounded when your PR takes a slide.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
It's impractical to build robots to make equipment that is made in the hundred of units and individual parts weighs in the tons. Humans are more flexible so it's easier for humans to do short runs and American workers have a fairly long history of doing this work. For China it's workers are one generation off the farm and it's one thing to slap two halves of an iPad together but a very different issue aligning 5 ton metal castings. Ultra heavy equipment is just shy of being one offs so it requires a much higher skill set which the US still excels at. This is nothing new. I remember reading decades ago about Russian Subs couldn't match the US for quiet operation because we had the only mills that could make the propellers for quiet running. The largest metal castings we did were for the turrets for WW II battle ships and even the US can't reproduce those now.
Well, if we're talking about the category of large airplanes, then the undisputed winner is the Antonov An-225 Mriya which was built in the Soviet Union and the Ukraine to be the equivalent of the USA Space Shuttle's transport aircraft. It tops the categories of :
-- world's heaviest aircraft ever (max. takeoff weight greater than 640 tons)
-- world's largest aircraft ever
-- largest aerodyne (in length and wingspan) ever entering operational service
-- absolute world record for airlifted payload at 189,980 kilogram (418,834 pounds)
;>)
Of course, the largest wingspan ever is owned by Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, the Hughes Aircraft H4-Hercules. It was never really an operational aircraft: it only flew once, and it was really made of birch instead of spruce. But hey, in terms of largest wingspan ever built, USA-ians can chant "We're Number One! We're Number One!"
If you pay half for construction equipment and it breaks within a month, that throws off the expensive estimate just a bit. Any cheap-manufacturing country does not offer sufficient quality for business use of quarter million dollar machinery. They make cheap, hastily designed stuff out of inferior materials to undercut everyone because that's what they do. They can't make a perfect machine because then they'd need a vast engineering infrastructure and high purity metal manufacturing and all that. That's primarily the US and not a whole lot more.
There are two ways of being competitive. The first one is to lower all costs, (and especially labor costs) and make a weak product cheaper than competitors. The second one is to make better products with high price.
The cut-all-costs approach has a problem: there is always someone in a poor country ready to work for lower wage. Being competitive this way means making workers poorer and poorer. And there are environmental issues: costs can be cut by wreaking the environment in countries where there is no regulation to protect it. And since the ecosystem is global, environmental issue created in poor countries will bite back rich countries later.
Cutting all costs to be competitive leads to social and environmental destruction. I am glad there are still some success stories of good products with high price. Of course I do not take for granted that the high-price product is driving up wages and environment preservation, but at least it is not incompatible with it.
The USA has resorted to buy everything imported, since their consumers would rather whine about quality than pay for it. The thousands of billions spent on clothing, electronics, food, cars and building materials to name a few industries don't weigh up to the few that come in by exporting planes or mining equipment and such.
Also, quite a lot of these products are assembled from imported materials or half-products, the owners or shareholders are often foreign so apart from providing actual manufacturing and producing jobs to the USA, a lot of the profit is often not staying in the USA.
The Netherlands used to have a very prosperous ship building industry. That died out, competition from lower wage countries with good sea access made the cheaper, worse quality ships still a good investment. Then the competitors got better at building ships with the experience they gained and even the high quality ships could be purchased from lower wage countries. By now, these countries have lost most of their ship building industry to the far east, where they build ships in assembly lines by the dozens per year, on dozens of assembly lines. Imagine an iPhone 5 manual assembly line, building 1000 yards and larger ships. Now imagine 20 of those lines in a shipyard. This is reality now. If mining excavators, planes trains or any other product named in this list ever gets produced in numbers big enough to warrant mass production sites, cheap labour countries will start producing. We may laugh at India or China's plans to produce their own aerospace or commercial flight equipment, but in 10 years, Boeing and Airbus will most likely be buying 90% of their parts prefabricated from those very countries and in 20 years, they will probably be reduced to a manufacturing and assembly location for them.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Quality is still there... if you pay for it.
Take tools for an example: in the old days, all tools sold were pretty good, and pretty expensive. If I visit the hardware store today, I see a lot of inexpensive crap on the shelves but the good stuff is still there, so I now have a choice that I didn't have before. If I expect to be building a couple of houses, it makes sense to buy expensive power tools that are dependable and will last forever. However, if I will only have occasional use for a tool, the cheaper version makes better economic sense. My electric screwdriver is top of the line as it sees a lot of use, however my drill press is a cheap Chinese one that only sees occasional use. It's still going strong after 10 years; the point is that in the old days, I probably couldn't have afforded it, or justified the cost.
My washing machine? Over a decade old without any servicing whatsoever; this brand still has an expected useful service life of 20 years
TV? I got rid of my old glass tube dog kennel model to get a flatscreen, but that old TV found a new home and still works... 10 years old.
Cell phone? People throw them out because technology moves fast these days; the difference between a 2 year old phone and a new one is significant. But my old iPhone still works perfectly after nearly 5 years, and it's getting a new lease on life as a home automation control panel.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I see the typical idiot USA bashing going on here but anyone who needs to use construction or mining equipment world wide already knows this. Likewise anyone dealing with oil and gas discovery-recovery and industrial farm equipment. But slashdot faux Marxists are free to buy those Angolan built passenger airplanes.
The American car manufacturers said they couldn't comply with new pollution standards for years, and along comes Mr. Honda with his CVCC engine that already does, and without a catalytic converter.